Luck, That's All I've Got
by MindsandMirrors
Summary: What shall our Hero do? He's got nothing but medical training, a set of brass knuckles, and a metric crap ton of luck.
1. Chapter 1

To be honest, things were a blur, almost dream-like. I remember being shaken awake, walking out of my room and shooting a guard, I then somewhat remember putting two bullets into each of the guards that had fired on Tom and Mary Holden but after that, events were a sharp reality.

I was slowly walking down the hall to the Overseer's office when I heard a noise that caused my blood to turn to lava. A red haze descended over my vision and I walked in slowly, my gun raised.  
I fired two rounds into the guard's skull, both making an audible _clink_ noise on the metal floor, and turned the barrel at the Overseer's face.

"You son of a bitch. Not only did you torture and kill Jonas but you had that bastard beating your own goddamn daughter! What the fuck is wrong with you!?" I smacked the side of the gun into his face, knocking him down and by some miracle, it didn't go off even with my finger on the trigger.  
"I did it for the-"  
"Good of the vault yata yata yah. If I hear that phrase one more time I'm going to shove this gun barrel up your ass and fire. Now," I pressed the barrel to his forehead, deadpan. "If I get even a bit of static from Amata that doesn't expressly say that you didn't hurt her I'm going come back, break your legs, and bury you up to your neck in sand and leave you there. Understand me?" He nodded vigorously. "Good."

I stood up and started walking out of the room, when I was at the door I heard soft boots on the metal floor and turned to see the Overseer charging me with Mack's stun baton. I reacted on instinct and fired a round into his stomach.

The only thing heard was her scream and the gunshot. The next thing I know I'm sitting in a cave against a big cog shaped steel door with 101 painted in yellow on it, staring at the end of my gun.

Without a word, without a thought I pressed the barrel to my temple and wrapped my finger around the trigger. I took a deep breath and pulled it back


	2. Chapter 2

I wrapped my finger around the trigger and pulled it back,

but nothing happened.

I looked at the pistol in surprise and pulled the slide backwards, an empty casing falling to the stone floor.  
I began laughing hysterically at the fact that my life was saved by a small bit of brass before throwing the silver gun as hard as I could to the end of the cave in rage. I heard it make contact with something and go off, and light streamed through a break in the brittle wooden door it had hit, the ray falling right on the face and causing me to recoil and scramble away from the light in surprise and pain.  
I stood up, slowly, and walked over to the ancient wooden door to feel my foot go through something like weak rock.

I looked down to see my foot had gone through a skeleton's ribcage. Hmm.

Feeling desensitized at the moment I pulled my foot out and kept walking towards the door. I tried to push the splintered and rotted wood door open but it was stuck. I kicked the door repeatedly and only ended up with a sore foot. I then took to trying to bash the door in with my shoulder, putting a large crack in it. Getting frustrated I pulled my pistol and stupidly wasted whatever remained in the magazine of my pistol into the hinges and handle.

Finally managing to kick the door down I limped out the door and held my pistol out, loading another magazine, racking the slide, and putting the safety on before tucking it into the utility belt that hung around my waist, next to the baton I had stolen from Mack. Satisfied they were both securely in place I started walking down the steep hill to find it more of a cliff. About halfway down a previously secure looking foot hold crumbled beneath me and I started sliding down, one knee in my chest and the other dug into the ground to try and slow my self down.

When I reached the bottom my knees were torn up from the rocks and twigs I went over and I was coughing up dust from how many times I flipped over when my knees gave their position out. I sat up and spit out the last of the dust I saw a destroyed town and got up to take a look. Surely I would find something or someone there, right?

I got up and brushed my self off before checking my legs for anything that was major. I was surprised to find that there was a flesh wound in the side of my leg. It must have happened when I shot the two officers.  
The moment I noticed it, it started throbbing painfully. I dug through my bag to find a vial of Med-X, peroxide, and a stimpak.

Pulling the plastic cap off of the needle I pushed it into my femoral artery and released half the chemical into my blood stream. I began to feel the effects immediately and sighed in relief before grabbing the peroxide and pouring it on the wound. I clenched my teeth slightly and then grabbed the stimpak. Preparing to push the pressure sensitive needle into the same artery I stopped as I thought of possible bullet fragments left in the wound so I instead wrapped it in a bandage and stood up, testing my weight on it. Satisfied that I could at the very least limp without falling I started off towards the bombed town.

* * *

The sun was falling when I reached and I could feel the air tingle on my skin as I watched it fall. I just stood there until I heard overly patriotic music playing behind me. I turned around and saw that there was a small floating orb with radio antenna attached to it's chassis. I looked at it for a few seconds before I heard a guttural yell behind me, whipping around I saw a man with what looked like grease smeared over his eyes and chest who had apparently strapped whatever he could find in a junk yard to himself including, but not limited to, a strainer as a helmet, half a rotted tire as a shoulder piece, chains to hold it together, a leather skirt studded with bits of scrap, and he was using a rusted car door as a shield and something to balance the silver sniper rifle he held on.

"Haha, I's got myself a new victim." He ran up to me, bashed me in the face with his shield before pointing his sniper-rifle at me and time slowed to a crawl.

' _Guess I'm going to die here. Well, I was just ready to shoot my self, wasn't I?_ ' I thought before realizing there was fear bubbling up from my stomach. ' _But do I want to die? Then again, I don't really have a choice in the matter do I?_ ' That's when he pulled the trigger back but it never clicked. The trigger was stuck.

I nearly laughed out loud when his gun was apparently malfunctioning. He tried to pull the bolt back but it was stuck as well. Without waiting for him to fix his weapon I pulled my pistol from my side, flicked the safety off and pulled the trigger back, the gun jumping back and almost hitting me in the head as I was holding it with one hand and was totally unprepared for the recoil. I recovered from the shot and saw that the man was missing an ear. He had dropped his rifle and, without thinking about it, I pointed it at his head and easily pulled the trigger back, putting a large hole in his head.

I put the rifle down and held my hand to my mouth, trying to force bile back down but failing. I scrambled away and vomited up last nights dinner of two-hundred year old Salisbury steak. Just as good going up as it was going down.

After I wiped the foul liquid from my lips I stood up, stumbled and nearly fell into my own vomit puddle and walked over to the guy and where I dropped his gun and picked it back up, pulling the bolt back smoothly and a shell popped out with a click and I picked it up. I looked it over to see that it was a rather well looked after gun, the stock was weathered smooth and the barrel was mostly free of rust despite it obviously being ancient. I lowered the barrel to the ground and looked at the corpse of the man, turning the sand red with his blood as it leaked from the gaping wound in his forehead.

I walked over to him, gun in hand, and crouched down next to him. Putting the rifle off to the side I started rifling through his pockets. Coming up with a handful of 10mm rounds, a mostly full box of cigarettes, a pre-war lighter, and another handful of magazines for the rifle. I put them in various pockets and then fell onto my back, letting out a heavy breath and I just laid there, thinking over what had just happened.

" _I just killed a man, why is this such a shock? I killed Mack not an hour ago. Or was that a decade? I'm not quite sure..._ " I thought before checking my PIP-Boy's clock. " _Just an hour. Guess I was right._ " My head swam with thoughts as I laid there, practically a corpse.

At some point I must've passed out as I when I opened my eyes there was a small crowd of people around me, smiling with rotted teeth at me. My eyes were flicking from one to another. It felt like I sat there for hours but it must've been for only a few seconds as they snapped into a frenzy as if not a beat was missed. One, a girl not far from my age with dirty brown hair in twin pigtails on the side of her head, swung her legs around my hips and straddled me, grinding down on me slightly. She held a rusty kitchen knife to my throat and lowered her face not two inches from my own.

"What should we ask him first?" She asked in a mock sweet voice, her putrid breath making me force down a gag.  
There were multiple answers from the crowd but the most prominent was, "The Vault! Tell us how to get into the Vault!"  
"You heard the guys baby. Now, let's know before I have to start playing rough. And if you play nice, I might just reward you. How does 'My Little Pet' seem as your knew name?" She once more pressed down onto me.  
"Fuck. You." I spat out through grit teeth.  
"Aww, I guess I'll have to get rough then." She frowned slightly before moving the knife from my throat and to my chest, cutting a diagonal line down the front of my jump suit and through my shirt. I stayed still though it broke my skin, causing a light twinge of pain. One started to say something but they were cut off by a lancing red laser blast piercing his skull. They all looked at the source and one said,  
"Aw hell, it's one of those damn propaganda spewers. Light it up!" One shouted and they all turned towards it, pulling out either hunting rifles, pistols, or assault rifles, even the one sitting on top of me joined the firefight against the small bot that might've just saved my life.

I pushed myself to my feet and pulled the baton out, flicking it out with the press of a button I swung it into the skull of the nearest raider and picked the assault rifle he was holding. I raised it to my shoulder and pointed the circular sight at the skull of a raider. I put my finger into the trigger guard and prepared to pull the trigger but froze.

" _Am I going to kill them? Do I need to?_ " Despite knowing that it would be needed to survive out here, I hesitated until I thought about what they were prepared to do to me, knowing that they would do it to countless more people. This sent me to that place where nothing matters.

A red haze filled my eyes and I fired one round into the head of one, the recoil jumping the gun up an inch until I tucked it further into my shoulder and pulled the trigger once more, the bullet flying into the skull of another, the sound of the fire fight around me masking my own gunfire. I killed another when one turned around to look at me and screamed out, I fired a round that went into his open mouth and took the top of his spine with it when it exited, pushing him to the ground. He didn't get up again.

I dived behind a nearby crumbling wall as they fired at both me and the strange flying radio. I lay down on my stomach as rounds pierced rounds the wood above me. I started to make my way to a hole in the wall when they stopped firing. I stopped as well.

"Think we got 'im?"  
"Yeah, I think so. Go search to see if he's alive." I heard some angered grumbling as one left to my small shack area. I checked the chamber and magazine of my gun to see one bullet left

They walked over to me and I pointed my gun at the doorway and when he poked his head through his eyes saw me pointing the barrel of the assault rifle at his face. I held one finger to my lips and he just shouted,

"He's over he-!" His sentence was cut short by my bullet piercing his forehead. They began to fire at me and I retaliated with occasional shots from my pistol, hoping to take one or two out when I saw that the one I killed had the sniper-rifle I picked up from the raider from before. I crawled over to it and grabbed it by the barrel. Checking to make sure the safety was off I pointed it around the door way, fired and heard a yelp of pain.

I then crawled back over to the hole in the wall and, just to make sure there attention was focused elsewhere, I threw a bit of rubble at the wall and fired a bullet from my pistol, the slide locked back so I grabbed a magazine and drove a new one home, releasing the slide I put it in my belt and started crawling to the hole in the side of the house.

 _So, so many cliffs. Someone should put up a sign._


	3. Chapter 3

_This is off from my semi-usual schedule but I've had this thing sitting here for about... a month I should think, anyways, I've really wanted to get this out there so... here you go, enjoy._

When I reached the hole I pulled myself through, jagged pieces of wood and nails cutting into my skin and drawing small beads of blood onto my chest. Once I was free from it I stood up, looked around the shadow covered corner and saw that they were once again arguing about who should check to see if I was dead. Eventually one apparently got bored and tossed a belt of grenades into the house, causing me to dash away and take cover behind a rock.

The explosion shook my teeth and my ears to ring, those were my chief concerns until I noticed the large splinter buried in my heel, nearly fainting at the sight of the wound. It was buried in where I think my Achilles tendon used to be. More than likely it was torn and I would never be able to use it properly again unless I got immediate medical reconstruction which was unlikely.

See, in the Vault or Pre-War an injury like this would be nothing, head to the hospital, get surgery, and four days later you'd be running and jumping strong as ever. But out here, in the Wasteland, the only things that could help me now were either an Auto-Doc or a highly skilled and trained doctor with a replacement tendon that was the exact right length and several Super-Stimpaks ready. But all I had were a few stims and painkillers. It'd have to do. I pulled the partially used pen of Med-X from my pack and injected it into my leg before grasping the chunk of wood and pulling.

"Mmf..." I kept myself from screaming by biting my lip as a searing pain shot through my leg but I kept pushing through the pain. Eventually I must've gotten the wood out as I was sitting with a slowly, but steadily, growing pool of blood in no time.

Not caring about bullet fragments that I could pull from my leg afterwards I quickly checked the wound to see if any slivers remained and pulled a Stimpak from my belt before pushing the pressure sensitive needle into my heel and I sighed as it began knitting my flesh together. Wrapping the new wound in white cloth I checked the one on my thigh to find it mostly healed. I rewrapped it in the same, now rather dirty, bandage and stood up behind the rock, testing my weight on the leg once again to find that it would not support my weight.  
Now certain that I had torn my Achilles I grabbed a long board and broke it against the rock and taped it into a hasty splint around my leg. Grabbing a broken branch off to my right I tore off a long strip of fabric from my shirt under the jumpsuit and turned it into a pad on the jagged end of the stick.  
Checking on the raiders I saw that they were knocked unconscious, some dead from fragmentation piercing their chest, others from the blast, and I limped over there with my improvised crutch.

I pulled my pistol from my side and coldly put a round in their heads before searching them and coming up with two grenades, another handful of 10mm bullets, three assault rifles, eight rusty magazines of 5.56 rounds, a bottle of vodka, three switch blades, a claw hammer, a set of brass knuckles, two Shanxi Type-17 pistols, one Stimpak, assorted drugs, and several handfuls of Nuka-Cola bottle caps. Normally I'd leave them but if everyone's carrying them they must be important.

Taking all but the hammer I stood up from the last corpse before seeing a dirty piece of paper sticking out from his chest piece. I bent over and picked it up to see a crude map of what I assumed was the area. opening the piece of paper I saw that there was a gray blob named Megaton located slightly Southeast of an area labeled 'Springvale' and 'Home'. I looked around to see large billboard that said, in broken letters, SPRINGVALE SCHOOL. Taking note of something titled VAULT and below that: REMEMBER TO GET MORE EXPLOSIVES DIPSHITS! I snorted and thought of them blowing through the vault door. That thing was a foot and-a-half thick and made of a steel-titanium mix. They'd have more luck finding a working Auto-Doc than blowing through the door with conventional explosives.

Putting the map away I took the approximate location of the town and started limping towards it.

* * *

An hour later I came across what looked like a heap of scrap metal jumbled together with three men camped around a fire outside. I wiped the pain induced sweat from my forehead, drew my pistol and pointed it at the ground and to my left, and shouted out.

"Hey!" I started hobbling slightly faster towards them and one pulled an assault rifle from his back, putting his finger on the trigger. Before I could react he fired but not before someone wearing an eyepatch pushed the barrel upwards, sending a bullet that was probably meant for my heart into the fleshy part of my shoulder. I was knocked to the ground by the unexpected blow and held my shoulder tightly. This shit hurts. Not even out here for a day and already I've sustained three different relatively serious injuries, one of which was from the Vault. Today was just not my day.

As I squirmed in the dust someone rushed up to me and probed the wound before sighing in relief.  
"It went through and through. You're damn lucky that it's not lodged in there otherwise you'd be paying a whole lot more. Trust me." A male voice with a slightly annoyed tone said.  
"What do you mean 'a whole lot more'?!" Asked a gruff and incredulous voice.  
"You're the one that shot him! You think that a Vaulty is going to have enough caps to pay the Doc?"

I quickly adjusted to the pain while he was talking and opened my eyes. Pushing my self up on my good arm I took one look at it and knew that I'd need to have someone who was medically trained to see if it chipped any bones. Like he said, it went through and through and caused some ringing in my ears but that'd subside in a little bit so I wasn't worried.  
I stood up and pulled another clean bandage and some tape from my pack, attempting to wrap it with one hand until the man wearing an eyepatch, who had been the one to check on me, crouched down to help me out while what must have been doors screeched open to reveal a black man wearing a weathered and sleeveless duster and cowboy hat to match.

"What in the hell was with the gunfire?" He took one look at the assault rifle in the man's hands and the bullet wound in my shoulder and said, "Damnit, how many times have I told you to not fire without making sure that they mean you harm? This is your last warning. Next time something like this happens, you're out on your asses and not coming back." His tone suggested that he would throw them out himself if need be so the man just nodded and went back to sitting on a slightly rusted chair that looked uncomfortable. I picked my improvised crutch up from the ground and a man in a dirty two piece suit came up to me and held out three Stimpaks.  
"I do apologize for my companions... actions. He is quite excitable, but don't worry. Your expenses will come out of his next paycheck and these should cover it."  
"No fucking shit." I grabbed the Stimpaks in the man's hand and limped my way over to the guy sitting in his chair, reaching into my back pack as I went.

"Hey." I said and he turned to me, a scowl on his face that changed to shock as I punched him in the face with my good arm and a set of brass knuckles, breaking his nose and knocking him unconscious. I shook my fist and slipped the weapon into a pocket on my jumpsuit, smiling at the very satisfying crack his nose made.


End file.
